As Europe begins to emerge from the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, another crisis seems to be looming.
The German Constitutional Court last week threatened to block the Bundesbank from taking part in the EU stimulus program to save the Euro, in a challenge to European unity.
The reaction

After the seven weeks of lockdown, which had managed to suppress the spread of the coronavirus, Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the British people on the evening of Sunday 10 May to explain the next steps. Restrictions were to be eased, but moves would be tentative and contingent, checking

In the third episode of The Director's Chair, Michael Fullilove speaks with former Italian Prime Minister, Enrico Letta, about running a major European power, his relationship with world leaders, global governance during COVID-19, and the future of the European project

Three months have passed since the United States and the Taliban signed an “Agreement for bringing peace to Afghanistan”. For the Americans, it aims to put an end to the US military intervention in Afghanistan, which has lasted more than 18 years. The provisions of the agreement stipulate a

Prescription limits on contraceptives, closures of specialist sexual and reproductive health clinics, halts on comprehensive sexual education, and tightened access to safe abortion. Each of these phenomena occurs in times of health crises and states of emergency, and each is happening in the world

In the second episode of The Director's Chair, Michael Fullilove speaks with Lord Mervyn King about COVID-19, global economic downturn, the UK's response to the virus, Brexit, and what Lord King terms the 'radical uncertainty' of economic forecasting during a global crisis

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the heart of Europe. The severity of the virus has forced policymakers to shift their priorities almost exclusively to the home front. As a result, international security concerns, particularly the fight against the remnants of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which had until

Gains for China’s reputation in Europe from Beijing’s spectacular PR-actions in the fight against the coronavirus will be short-lived. Covid-19 has not shifted the geopolitical landscape between the old European and the new Chinese world.
Serbia’s President Vucic kowtow to Xi Jinping,

The Scottish National Party (SNP) was founded in 1934, and for most of the 20th century was a gathering of eccentrics, writers and Anglophobes (characteristics often combined in one member). Yet now, nearly a century on, it has a majority in the Scottish parliament and formed the government since

“This is a moment of reconstruction – we need to reinvent ourselves, myself included,” declared French President Emmanuel Macron in a televised address last week, during which he extended the country’s partial lockdown until 11 May.
Macron spoke of the need to reach strategic autonomy in

Every government is struggling with the Covid-19 crisis, with one eye to the post-coronavirus world. In this context, it may be worth looking at the French perception of Australia and their prospects, and need, for enhanced cooperation after the crisis.
France increasingly sees Australia as a key

Last week, the European Union closed all Schengen area borders in an attempt to stem the coronavirus pandemic, of which the Old Continent is now the epicentre.
This drastic response, which some consider to be the product of a weak and slow European administration, has also fed into the populist

Few know it, but Erfurt is one of Germany’s most beautiful cities. Packed with meandering narrow streets lined by half-timbered houses and overlooked by a soaring gothic cathedral, the Thuringian capital is a visual pearl tucked away in the country’s geographic core.
But if Erfurt is a

The novel coronavirus Covid-19 dominates not only the media headlines in Europe but the everyday life of just about anybody. In the federalist European Union, it is still up to the individual states, often also their parts – Bundesländer, Départements, Provincie, or whatever they are called –

After 47 years of a chaotic marriage, and more than three years of debates and negotiations that have cost two prime ministers, the United Kingdom has finally separated from the European Union.
The current conversations on the global consequences of this rupture have largely ignored the Pacific,

The collapse of the Soviet Union was – for Vladimir Putin – one of the greatest geopolitical disasters of the 20th century. Since the tumultuous 1990s, Russia has re-emerged as an important global actor, albeit with inherent state weaknesses, including, but not limited to, how Moscow is governed

Recent revelations make it clear that Iran’s willingness to confront the US following the strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad was not driven just by a mix of domestic considerations and a compelling desire to retaliate. Iran’s bluntly open challenge to the US may have been

It was supposed to be a routine technical procedure: upgrading telecommunications networks from the old fourth-generation (4G) standard to the newest fifth-generation (5G) technology. But this process quickly became the subject of heated debate in many Western capitals, essentially around one

As 2019 winds up, Lowy Institute staff and Interpreter contributors offer their favourite books, articles, films, or TV programs this year.
There are perks to being unfashionably behind the cultural curve. By letting new shows, books and tech percolate in the court of public opinion for a few

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a non-binding decision in February 2019 supporting Mauritius’s claim to the UK-administered Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia. Subsequently the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution in May 2019 endorsing the ICJ

There’s a telling scene in the recent sports documentary Icarus where the main protagonist of the film, Grigory Rodchenkov, sits at a table swirling containers of urine. “I am mafia, chased by WADA,” the former director of Russia’s anti-doping agency muses to himself. “In Russia, the

The US base on the island of Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, is among the most important US military facilities in the world, and is the foundation stone of the US presence in the Indian Ocean region. It’s been a vital element in Australia’s strategic position in the region for

On 22 November, the United Kingdom failed to comply with UN Resolution 73/295 passed in May, which demanded the UK “withdraw its colonial administration from the Chagos Archipelago unconditionally within a period of no more than six months”. Australia was one of only six states to vote against

Over its 18-year existence, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has mostly been in the spotlight as a forum for security cooperation, starting with the 2001 Convention that branded crimes of extremism, separatism, and terrorism as extraditable offences. The region is still facing significant security

This is an edited and abridged transcript of the launch of Sam Roggeveen’s new Lowy Institute Paper Our Very Own Brexit, held last week at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne with prominent social commentator and award-winning journalist George Megalogenis. George MegalogenisNormally,

“Valiant breaks London–Cape record by 54 mins”, led the 9 July 1959 edition of the Cape Argus. The arrival of the sleek, white-painted, and still highly classified long-range British nuclear bomber, which represented the cutting edge of Britain’s new Cold War airborne nuclear deterrent, drew

On 3 October, Vladimir Putin confirmed that China and Russia have forged a multidimensional alliance in economics, politics, and defense. This announcement both confounds the many observers who refused to accept it as a possibility and significantly transforms the stakes not just in Asia, but in

Germans had better sex under socialism, particularly heterosexual women, according to a comparative study undertaken in the late 1980s. A number of reasons present themselves for this curious fact. Perhaps socialism’s distinctive kinds of economic relationships effected gender relationships that

Last week, Russia’s Ambassador to Australia, Alexei Pavlovsky, delivered a keynote address at the Australian National University on Russia’s strategic architect and former foreign minister, the late Yevgeny Primakov. Reflecting on the speech, it is evident that policy makers, pundits, and the

If there’s any indication of how Africa is moving up on everyone’s agenda, look no further than the first edition of the Russia-Africa Summit, which saw 43 African heads of state converging last week on Sochi. Beyond the fact that the summit reflects the brisk trade Moscow does with the

Over the past few weeks, breathless British journalists have published verbatim the private words and long missives of a person known as “No. 10 Source”, who on close inspection is almost certainly Dominic Cummings, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Chief of Staff. Cummings attracted public

Preparations are proceeding in a businesslike way for the second of three possible independence referendums in New Caledonia, in 2020. Loyalists and independence groups are staking out their positions.
The Committee of Signatories of the 1998 Noumea Accord held its annual meeting in Paris on 10

The current diplomatic spat between the United Kingdom and the United States, following a fatal road accident involving the wife of a US “diplomat”, draws attention, yet again, to diplomatic immunity and its potential abuse.
The facts, as reported by the UK media and based on witness accounts

Former President Jacques Chirac, a giant of French politics and the man who said “non” to George W Bush and the war in Iraq in 2003, died yesterday at age 86.
The news brought a shower of tributes from around the world. In France, a national day of mourning in honour of the former head of

Last week in the United Nations Security Council, Russia and China blocked a resolution that would have demanded an end to fighting in the Syrian province of Idlib, the final stronghold of the opposition. It marks the 13th time that Russia has used its veto to block Security Council action on Syria

Episode 9 of the Lowy Institute’s new podcast, Rules Based Audio, is out today. In Kremlinology: What does Russia want? the dissident Russian journalist and academic Yevgenia Albats talks about how President Vladimir Putin has dominated Russian politics for two decades; and former

Two-and-a-half centuries ago, Saxony and Brandenburg were two of Central Europe’s great powers and rivals. Even today, in their more modest post-1990 incarnations as German federal states, they continue to evince vastly different identities. Centred on the historic cities of Dresden and Leipzig,

Every year, the “Conference of the Ambassadors” is a central moment in France’s foreign policy, as the French president reflects on the country’s achievements and outlines its objectives for the upcoming year. This year was no exception, as President Emmanuel Macron detailed his strategy on

On 31 October, the UK is once again due to leave the European Union. This is the third such deadline this year. It is possible that there will be a fourth, should the European Council be asked yet again to extend the UK’s membership to provide time for it to leave in an orderly rather than

Never one to shy from lofty goals, French President Emmanuel Macron used the G7 summit in the French seaside town of Biarritz to make tenuous first steps in rejuvenating the West as the world’s most powerful political alliance.
The summit ended yesterday amid improbable displays of goodwill and

Many of The Interpreter’s readers are experts on the theory and conduct of international relations. So, quite reasonably, they look at armed conflict through the lens of inter-state relations, where one state resorts to the use (or the threat of use) of armed force to prevail over another. For

In aligning himself with US President Donald Trump with regard to policing the Persian Gulf, new British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has abandoned any pretence that his type of Brexit would exclude security and defence matters. This is in sharp contrast to the position of Theresa May before him,

Last Tuesday (23 July) was a bad day in Northeast Asia, not just for what happened but what it foreshadows. Tensions are rising. After all, it’s not every day that a South Korean jet fighter fires across the bow of a Russian spy plane.
Tuesday’s first big event was the inaugural China-

For the first time since the Geneva Agreements of 1954, France has turned its eyes towards what is now termed the Indo-Pacific. The renewal of Paris’s interest in the region not only reflects a desire to tap on the wealth of rising Asia, but also Emmanuel Macron’s desire to restore France’s

Later today, after decades of speculation, Boris Johnson will be driven to Buckingham Palace, to “kiss hands“ with Her Majesty The Queen and receive his appointment as Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and First Lord of the Treasury.
Johnson is one of the most compelling and

The most perplexing question following Iran’s capture of the MV Stena Impero on Friday is why the British were unable to foresee this action as a natural response to Britain’s earlier seizure of the Iranian-flagged tanker Grace 1 in Gibraltar and make appropriate preparations. The Grace 1 was

The recent mini-series on the Chernobyl nuclear accident is a reminder that after 33 years the consequences of the accident are still very much with us. The costs to public health are extensively discussed, but the wider political consequences are also still felt. Chernobyl contributed to the

“Burden sharing” has long been a totemic term in discussions about NATO. Behind the happy paeans to shared values and mutual security interests uttered publicly by national leaders has always stood the hard reality of American power and Europe’s complete dependency upon it.
Yet under the